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print version[The below appeal from TV journalist Ravish Kumar first appeared in Hindi and this is quick English translation of that appeal]
Ravish Kumar’s appeal
Viewers and readers of India,
It is possible that many of you may not have seen that video from Manipur, in which many men are stripping Kuki women naked and stroking their organs. A crowd of men is carrying away the stripped women. The murderers of the mob are playing with the bodies of those women. Helpless women are crying. The crowd of men is enjoying. Social media sites will soon block this video under community rules of decency, but the incident is real. Its description is only what is written. What we don’t know is what happened to those women after this video? From where was the crowd bringing them, and where were they taking them. There is no beginning and end in that video, there is a little part, it is not seen but no one can turn away from that video. You can’t keep quiet today.
Today we have to speak for those naked women surrounded by a crowd of men. Speak up wherever you are. If you have gone to the market, talk to the shopkeeper there. Talk to the rickshaw puller. Talk to Ola-Uber drivers. If you have called your father, then tell him this first of all. If you have received a call from your girlfriend, then first of all tell this. If you are in the classroom, then stand there and speak in front of your teacher, if you are having fun with friends in a restaurant, stop eating there and speak for these women. If you are in the bus, in the train, at the airport, then tell there that such a video has gone viral from Manipur, in which the crowd is playing with the bodies of women by stripping them naked. This incident has happened in that country, which repeats the lie every day that women are worshiped like goddesses. Then he writes Save Daughter on the back of his own car. If you don’t speak against that mob today, their body, their mind will be naked forever. Makes you a monster like the same crowd, which is playing with the bodies of those women by stripping them naked. So pick up the phone, speak, write, and tell everyone that this has happened to the women of Manipur. We oppose it. Our heads hang in shame. You save your humanity. Speak against the Manipur incident. No one is listening so cry for those women alone in a closed room.
I know that the helplessness of those women of Manipur will not reach you because you are not left fit enough to listen to their cries. Because the newspaper you read, the channel you watch, has killed your sensibilities. The goodness in you has been destroyed. I don’t know whether the voice of those women will be raised in Godi media or not, I don’t know whether the Prime Minister will cry out loud seeing this scene or not, I don’t know whether Women Development Minister Smriti Irani will cry just for show or not, but I know who has made this crowd, what kind of politics has made it. This politics has made you a monster. Godi media has turned its viewers and readers into man-eaters.
Identity politics in the name of caste, religion, language, and geography has made man a man-eater. A crowd of men dancing around the women of Manipur has also formed around you. Beware of the uncles of the housing society. Beware of relatives who sow poison day and night in your homes. Go and tell all of them what kind of mob the politics of hatred and identity has turned the public into. Those women are not from Manipur. They are not from the ’Kuki’ community. They are nothing else. They are only women. If this incident doesn’t make you restless, if it doesn’t send shivers down your spine, then you should declare yourself dead.
But before taking the last breath, speak for those women. Write it down Tell someone that this has happened. The Prime Minister of this country Narendra Modi did not appeal for peace for two and a half months. Didn’t appeal to stop hatred and violence by going there. The state did not fulfill its duty. There is no guarantee that their departure or appeal would have stopped the violence, but what does this silence mean? Can this silence be called justified? Leave the silence of the Prime Minister, you break your silence. Speak.
Yours,
Ravish Kumar
o o
See Video of Ravish Kumar’s Appeal in Hindi
